January 13th, 2011

Idiot

Note: this is probably one of those posts that I need to write but you don’t need to read.

So Thursdays are my writing-at-home day, and today I am allegedly finishing up the last edits on *The Big Dream*. So I decided that while I was working, I would cook some stuff that doesn’t require a lot of attention, and then when I was finished with the manuscript and very depressed and anxious at having nothing further to do (this is what happens to me) I would at least have things to eat.

On the menu were roasted chickpeas and a baked rice pudding. I put the chickpeas on to boil (which is the first step on that project) and the pudding casserole in the oven. Last time I boiled chickpeas they foamed all over, so this time I put in a little vegetable oil so they’d behave. You’re supposed to stir the pudding 3x in the first hour, so the rice doesn’t clump together, and on one of the stirs I spilled a little milk on the floor of the oven. I couldn’t figure out how to clean it up, the oven being hot and all, so I just thought I’d let it burn off. The chickpeas were merrily steaming in their pot, not foaming at all. Genius, that vegetable oil trick.

I got back to work and noticed that the apartment was getting a little smoky. “There goes that milk!” I thought. I worked more. The apartment was wreathed in smoke, a lot more than you’d think for just a few drops of milk. Just as I was considering this, the smoke alarm went off.

I ran to the mysterious clump of alarms in my hallway–3 of them, one I think possibly for carbon monoxide. I tried turning off all three, but nothing changed. I got down of my chair and turned off the oven, opened the window a little (it’s *cold* out) and got back on my chair. The alarms are REALLY REALLY LOUD so I I alternate one finger in one ear while trying to pry open an alarm to get the batteries out with the other. I finally get one open; it doesn’t have a battery. Good to know.

My neighbour comes over to see if I’m ok. I apologize, say I’m fine. I try waving a pillow at the smoke (saw it in a movie once) and give up on being warm and open the window all the way. Still like being inside a police siren. I put on my shoes and run downstairs to look for the super, but she is absent. I go back up (you can hear my alarm from the basement), prop the door open with the chair and go back to waving my pillow. The neighbour comes back (poor guy) to suggest I try a hair dryer. I think this is brilliant, run to get it, then realize there is no power outlet near the alarm. Then I try to move the couch to expose a socket, and wrench my shoulder extremely painfully. Then I lie on the couch and think about crying, or else about abandoning my home. Except I’m really in too much pain to get far, so I plug in the hair dryer and realize I’m still too far away. So I got try plugging it in in the kitchen, and turn off the chickpeas while I’m there. Perhaps the alarm is confusing their steam with smoke?

I blow-dry for awhile, and finally the damn thing stops. So I shut the door, and go to stir the chickpeas before I turn them back on. You probably guessed it before I did–the chickpeas were black because somehow all their water had boiled off, so that *was* smoke, not steam. Apparently, my olfactory sensors, so keen on other matters (“Did you change shampoo?”) cannot detect burning chickpeas. I am giant idiot, and will not be getting roast chickpeas this evening. Also, my apartment is freezing and smelly, and my shoulder hurts, and my neighbour probably hates me.

I will think of the silver lining tomorrow.

January 12th, 2011

Winter Books

I don’t always pay attention to the “publishing seasons,” but this year I am, and the winter crop of books is pretty amazing. Winter books that I (and you?) want to read:

The Guardians by Andrew Pyper: I went to the launch party last night, which was super-fun and included among the canapes nutella on bread! I also bought a *hardcover* novel, which pretty much only AP can convince me to do…it’s a ghost story about friendship that sounds a little out of my league but really, I’ve never *not* liked an AP book.

The Divinity Gene by Matthew Trafford launches his first collection at The Gladstone on February 15. I’ve read a few stories around town and also seen Matthew perform some monologues, and am pretty much assured that this collection is going to be the weirdest and most excellent we’ve seen in a while. Also, that the launch is going to be really fun.

And Also Sharks by Jessica Westhead isn’t out until March, but I’m already excited. Stories in the Puritan and The New Quarterly have whet my appetite, as does thinking about her first book, the novel *Pulpy and Midge*. Only two more months to wait!

The Odious Child by Carolyn Black has been on my radar for a while, and this description from the publisher’s website makes me even more interested: “if your child is a furry feral creature, your new love interest a potential serial killer (or worse, a fictitious cliché)…?” Another March book–oh, the waiting!

The Beggar’s Garden by Michael Christie is a surprise treat for me that I just found out about today. Unlike the above authors, Christie isn’t in Toronto and I didn’t know about this book through “buzz.” Rather, a couple years ago I was totally blown away by his story in the Journey 20 anthology, “Goodbye, Porkpie Hat.” At the time, I googled around to see what else he had written and found nothing and was sad. And now today, someone’s facebook post informs me that he has a whole book of stories for me to read, out this month. I’m thrilled, and hope the touring gods bring him to Toronto sometime soon!

What other books are you looking forward to this season?

January 11th, 2011

Rose-coloured reviews *The Mysteries of Pittsburgh* by Michael Chabon

I was quite impressed by Michael Chabon’s later books, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and especially Wonder Boys–such wild and different novels,original, weird and very funny. So when I found a used copy of his first book, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and found it completely covered in exclamations of delight from various reviewers, I thought I couldn’t miss enjoying it.

I missed.

Don’t get me wrong–there’s a reason why The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Village Voice, Cosmopolitan and Playboy wrote blurbable raves about this book–“Astonishing,” “remarkable,” “extraordinary” and all the rest, it’s a linguistically gleeful, almost acrobatic novel, and I took real pleasure in the flights of language throughout. On almost any page you’ve find something like, “In the big, posh, and stale lobby of the Duquesne Hotel–in a city where some men, like my father, still wear felt hats–one can still get one’s hair cut, one’s shoes shined, and buy a racing form or a Tootsie Roll.” Or how about, “He stood up, inhaled deeply, and cried, ‘Ah, the sweet piss odor of cedar!'”

There’s a real flare for sentences here that goes much deep than fireworks–the images make sense as long as you care to think about them, and the metaphors are joyous and flamboyant, but true at the core. And oh, what an evocation, a mythologization of Pittsburgh–that’s the main thing I loved about this book. Pittsburgh seemed a magical and beloved place–interesting that the narrator was supposed to have lived there only 4 years, because he seemed to have known and loved it forward. And yet some mysteries never get solved, and I loved that about this urban dream, too–cities are just too big to ever know anything about them.

So what didn’t I love? The plot, I guess, and its various machinations. Art Bechstein is graduating from university, about to start working in a bookstore and have one last magical summer before he buckles down to some unknown serious grownup career. While working on his last academic paper, he meets a guy at the library who tries to flirt with him. Art politely turns him down, and they become friends. The new guy, also named Arthur (this worked just fine, much better than you’d think) draws him into an exciting, glamourous world of new friends and various sexual imbroglios, money and power.

Well, that’s how it’s set up and marketed. In truth, it’s a profoundly episodic novel, with characters making centre-stage appearances for pages on end, only to never be seen again. This happens in the first clangourous party that Arthur takes Art to–it seemed so intense that it all must mean something, but it was just a set-piece; Chabon could write a good party scene, so he did so. Even this girl, glimpsed on the back lawn of the party after a long search for her: “She stood alone in the dim centre of the huge yard, driving imperceptible balls all across the neighbourhood. As we clunked down the wooden steps to the quiet crunch of grass, I watched her stroke. It was my father’s ideal: a slight, philosophical tilt to her neck, her backswing a tacit threat, her rigid, exultant follow-through held for one aristocratic fraction of a second too long.”

Wow. Doesn’t it break your heart to know that this character, Jane, hangs around until the end of the book without doing anything else interesting ever again? In her one other big scene, she makes a salad.

Virtuosic writing for its own sake annoys me. I can’t be called plot-obsessed, but I’d like what’s on the page to deepen my understanding of character, setting, mood, something. There is a heavy plot running through the final third of the book, to do with the mafia (I’m not spoiling anything) and another with Arthur’s wildly annoying new girlfriend, Phlox (yes, really). I could be in a sensitive mood, but I felt that women didn’t fare too well in this novel–Chabon is well-known for his intimate understanding of men, and perhaps in his early days it was at the expense of understanding women. Phlox felt more like a scrap heap of wild outfits, quotations, beauty tricks and tears. A whole novel reading about her, and when she writes in a letter towards the end, “There’s only one place in the world where you are supposed to put your penis–inside of me,” I couldn’t tell if any spark of humour intended by character, or by author.

I was truly baffled by how the plot wrapped up at the end of the book, and though I don’t know much about the mafia in Pittsburgh, what I could understand struck me as terribly unlikely. Though I realized about midway through the book that the narrator was being constructed as unreliable, I wasn’t able to glean anything from that fact other than that the narrator was unreliable. In the great unreliably voiced books (*A Prayer for Owen Meaney* or *Money,* or even *The Great Gatsby,* which inspired this one) the absence of “truth” in the narration allows the readers to solve their own riddles, or create their own truth. But what can we do with the fact that Art never mentions having one friend–even a friendly acquaintance–that he did not meet after page 1 of this book. Are we to suppose that Art the narrator elides these memories as too painful or difficult? Or that Michael the writer couldn’t be bothered to write characters who existed prior to page 1?

I read the bookclub notes at the back (I have a 2001 edition, after Chabon was famous for *Kavalier and Clay*) and as an apology for having had wild ambitions for the breadth and amazingness of this novel, Chabon says, “Twenty-two, I was twenty-two!” But somehow he doesn’t see that as being inherent in the text itself; I think it is. I think this is a wild brilliant first effort from an author that had not really learned to marshal himself, to be true to his characters and his stories, and not just to his own writing. Later on, he did learn those things. So you should probably read this book–it’s got a lot to recommend it–but you should definitely read those later ones.

This is my first book for the Roofbeam Reader challenge
Off the Shelf. 11 to go!

January 10th, 2011

First Drafts Are So Embarrassing with Jessica Westhead: Notebook Love

Mainly Rose-coloured is a solo exercise–I think of stuff to do, then I do it, then I tell you about it (challenges, resolutions). Or I do stuff, then tell you how I liked it (reviews). Or I just rattle on endlessly with no real point (almost everything else). On rare occasions, I ask other folk to do stuff with me, and those usually wind up being the coolest posts. As with FDASE–I started posting some of my embarrassing first-draft material, as well as how I cleaned it up, and asked if anyone else wanted to share. And what’s cool is, some do! For example, today, talent novelist and short-story writer and generally lovely human, Jessica Westhead–take it away, Jessica!

Notebook Love

by Jessica Westhead

Since taking Lynda Barry’s life-changing workshop, “Writing the Unthinkable,” in 2008, I have embraced handwriting as the best possible route to a first draft. And in becoming a passionate paper convert, I have re-embraced the humble notebook. Over the years, I spurned notebooks for random scraps of paper—I’d write ideas on those, and if I didn’t lose them, I’d round up a bunch and transcribe their contents into a big Word file. And more often than not, the ideas would die there. I’d forget about them, or, even if I did revisit these onscreen bits and pieces later, I’d feel disconnected from them. Which was all very disheartening.

But notebooks! I recently had the epiphany that the notebook is for writers what the sketchbook is for artists. This may sound ridiculously obvious, but it was a revelation to me. Not everything I write down has to be publishable! It’s all practice! I even have a little shelf of filled-up notebooks in my office at home:

Over the past few years, for short-story writing, my process has been first to get new ideas down in my notebooks, either through solo writing; in other super-inspiring workshops such as Stuart Ross’s Poetry Boot Camp or Sarah Selecky’s Writing Practice classes; or during meetings of a writing quartet I’m part of with the brilliant Sarah Selecky, Grace O’Connell, and Sarah Henstra (we call ourselves “The Jupiter Group”), in which we take turns hosting and giving each other writing exercises. I don’t commit anything to a computer file until I have a rough beginning, middle, and end figured out in a notebook. Once I do, I transcribe that story outline into Word, and then I go back to my notebooks to find ideas to fill it out. And voilà—a first draft!

That’s how I wrote “Everyone Here Is So Friendly”. It began as a writing exercise I gave myself, and, much to my delight, quickly evolved into a full-fledged story. Then I revised it with feedback from The Jupiter Group, and submitted it to The Puritan, where it was eventually published.

Here are my notebook pages where “Everyone Here Is So Friendly” originated:




I should mention that this was an ideal scenario—by no means do all my stories announce themselves so immediately and insistently. In general, though, this is how notebook writing works for me, and why I love the old-fashioned pen-on-pages method so much.

(Thanks, Rebecca!)

***
It’s RR again, just to thank Jessica for playing along and sharing her cool work (not really embarrassing at all, come to think of it). And also to say, if anyone else would care to share their first drafts and/or process proceeding from first drafts, they would be very very welcome. I should point out, because I know my audience, that it FDASE posts don’t have to be fiction just because it’s what I do–poems, articles, essays, or really anything you’ve revised is fine.

January 9th, 2011

Good things to do

Some helpful suggestions you might want to consider:

Nathalie says back up your beloved blog and she’s right–if you don’t understand how the internet works (and I believe that would be most of us here in the blogsphere) you need to protect yourself against it doing something you don’t understand and eating your blog. If you follow the instructions on the site Nathalie links you to, it’ll seriously take less than 2 minutes, and then you can email the file to yourself and sleep better. I know I will.

My friend R. says do the Ontario Health Survey (if you live in Ontario) and she’s right too! It’s a little weird to be telling all this personal stuff to the internets, but it is helping medical scholars to have this huge bank of data, and don’t you want your personal medical quirks to be counted? There is one depressing question about how many hours in a day you spend sitting, but I’ve moved past it.

I say roast some chickpeas! They are nice crunchy snack full of protein, and you can put whatever spices you want on them. I can’t find online the exact recipe I used as my new recipe of the week, but this one’s close–

January 5th, 2011

A couple reading challenges

So my main reading challenge this year will be Steven W. Beattie’s from That Shakespearian Rag, which boils down to:

“…why don’t we all try to read better: to be more sensitive, expansive readers, to enter more deeply into the text, to actively engage with books on an intellectual, aesthetic, and linguistic level. Let’s try to focus less on the quantity of our reading and more on the quality. Who knows? By slowing down a bit, you might even find you’re enjoying yourself more.”

Which is absolutely right, and something we should all be doing all the time. Except for those who get paid to read (academics and reviewers, I guess), there is no other reason to read except for the joy of the story, of the new information, new ideas. And I for one tend to lose those things when I read too quickly, ending up being able to say of the book, “Well, I read it.” Much as I do tend to be seduced by the pleasure of making tidy entries in my book journal and on Goodreads, no one cares *at all* how many books I read. So I’m going to follow Steven’s pledge to read in the now, with no goal in mind other than the text itself.

*However,* the real reason I’ve never done a book challenge is that I’m not organized enough, and I get sad when I have to read things I don’t like or am not interested in. However, there’s a challenge this year for something I’ve been wanting to do anyway–so by entering the challenge, I can follow my own path but still have company–yay!!

I found the To Be Read Challenge on Nathalie Foy’s lovely blog, and it seems ideal for me.

All you have to do is “To finally read 12 books from your “to be read” pile, within 12 months.” I’m superstoked to read these books that I’ve long looked forward to and somehow never managed to read, and I’ve already started reading the first one. If you are interested in joining me, the deadline’s been extended until January 15, and full details are at the link above. Here’s my list:

*The Mysteries of Pittsburgh* by Michael Chabon
*Jenny and the Jaws of Life* by Jincy Willett
*The Anxiety of Everyday Objects* by Aurelie Sheehan
*An Abundance of Katherines*by John Green
*Inventory* by Dionne Brand
*Real Life* by Sharon Butala
*A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius* by David Eggers
*Snow Crash* by Neal Stephenson
*Away from Her* Alice Munro (yeah, yeah, I got the movie paperback)
*London Fields* by Martin Amis
*Tell Your Sister* by Andrew Daley
*Songs for the Missing* by Stewart O’Nan

Two alternates–in case I wind up hating one of the above enough not to finish it:
*Little Eurekas* by Robyn Sarah
*Subways are for Sleeping* by Edmund G. Love

January 4th, 2011

New Year’s Resolutions and Reverb 31

What central story is at the core of you, and how do you share it with the world? (www.reverb10.com)

I was right that Reverb kind of went beyond my energy for self-reflection–I’ve been dragging my feet on this last prompt and my resolutions. I think I give up on the prompt–stories have endings and I do not like to see things in my life as ending, just changing (or, even better, staying exactly the same for ever). I think I am in the middle of my story and therefore can’t really narrativize to accurately. Or at least, that’s my excuse.

Ok, resolutions–these aren’t too creative (see above self-reflection exhaustion) but I think they’ll do me.

Resolutions Everyone Makes

1. Eat healthfully. Duh. I don’t see a year coming when I think I could get away with constantly eating Menthos and Tostitos. Specifically, I’m doing another 2-week detox as of today, and unless this one goes way better than the last, thereafter junking the detox concept entirely. Following that, I’ll just try to eat like a normal healthy person.
2. Beyond the health factor, I’m going to especially try to learn some new recipes–I get into food ruts. I don’t actually think I can manage more than one new recipe per week…maybe not even that. Let’s say…3 a month.
3. Exercise. Again duh. The specific aspect of this one for now is that I’m going to try to swim more, something that I love and forget about for years at a time. This one is subject to reevaluation, because I don’t currently live near a pool, but post-move, I might. Let’s say again, 3 swims a month, maybe.
4. Eat KFC popcorn chicken. In high school, this was the holy grail of junk food, but I have shunned it for years, based on rumours and heresay and the strong social stigma attached to being seen in a KFC. But no more–sometime this summer, I shall consume the unhealthiest of all foods once more. But only once.
4. Move. This has been on my agenda before, but never so firmly. This time, with feeling: before April 1, I will live somewhere else. Moreover, I will pack up/purge my stuff, get the appropriate stuff to Goodwill, transfer the phone/hydro/internet/mail, hire movers, and whatever the other million moving things are–without having a meltdown or being a jerk to anyone. My previous moves have been so stressful that I have declined friendly helpers for fear that I would be mean to them–I really have to get past this.
5. Return emails promptly. If it’s just a question that needs an answer (that I know), in less than a day. If it’s a social, so-how’ve-you-been email, less than two weeks. Also, take better measures to remove self from mailing lists and filter spam–I imagine less nonsense email will help me answer those that actually matter in a more timely manner.
6. Floss. You are probably not still reading this, but I need to be reminded of flossing. I have permanent retainers, which make flossing an evil nightmare, but I am not magically exempt from gum disease. How about…at *least* every other night?
7. Help. I have been the beneficiary of lots of niceness in the literary community–people have made me feel welcome, offered me cool opportunities and the chance to sit at the table with the big kids. However, though I feel myself an eternal bug-eyed kid, I have in fact been around a while, and perhaps could help out others. As someone pointed out recently, I have a responsibility to try to perpetuate the open friendly writing community that I want to live in. I’m not really sure what form this could take, but I’m open to whatever opportunity knocks (and suggestions).
8. Give to charity. In case you were wondering, I did manage to make up for my charitable failure–the money eventually went to Pen Canada, which I’m happy about, and a few other worthies. This is actually most organized I’ve ever been about giving, so resolution #8 is just a reminder to keep it up.
9. Don’t do everything. I cannot attend a lot of the fun events I want to and I need to stop fretting about it. I don’t live in the heart of downtown, work a lot, commute a lot, etc.–no one minds the excuses except me. I’m sure no one 9well, very few) minds when I can’t make it out to things–I should just accept that and get some sleep.
10. Write a new book. Well, part of one, anyway.

January 3rd, 2011

Reverb 30

This month, gifts and gift-giving can seem inescapable. What’s the most memorable gift, tangible or emotional, you received this year?

I got a little behind with reverb, but I’m still chugging along. I actually glanced at this prompt a couple days ago, but wanted to wait to be back at my own computer so I could upload a photo of my funnest holiday gift. Now, looking at the prompt again, I realize that they probably really meant an emotional gift or at least a “tangible” gift with a heavily emotional meaning. And not a brightly coloured jacket with a peaked hood from The Fairies’ Pajamas. If I stretch it, perhaps this gift proves how very well my brother knows me, as he’s the one who gave it to me, and he knew very well I would love it. But mainly, I just think it’s neat:

December 30th, 2010

2010, I hardly knew ye

Tomorrow I plan to spend lying on a couch (possibly, in the course of the day, several couches) reading, napping, possibly eating candy–happy new year’s to me! So I have to wrap up 2010 tonight, blogwise, anyway.

Blogwise, 2010 was an excellent year, with my lovely new site from Create Me This and many lovely friendly readers to comment on, discuss, refute, and reassess my rantings. Thanks to all who did any of the above, or simply read the blog. I write Rose-coloured because my thoughts get lonely in the quiet inside my brain. Thank you for being friends with my thoughts and, in many cases, with me.

Obviously, I am exhausted and have a stupid cold; otherwise the above might have made a little more sense. Thus, I am going to refrain from making a top books–or a top anything–list for 2010. I read 73 books this year, which is a lot for me, so I’m content to brag about it and let it go at that. Counting is a lot easier than rating. Back before I got sick, though, I did make a couple contributions to Maisonneuve’s Best Books of 2010, which is a great list overall, and one I urge you to check out.

At some point in January, I will make some resolutions. That’s a process I usually love, but maybe I’ve overdone it on the introspection with Reverb, or maybe it’s just the cold stomping on my morale, but I am not feeling to resolution-love this year. I hope to make a comeback on that front shortly.

Other 2010 stuff? Well, Best Canadian Stories 2010 is out from Oberon now (but not on their website), including a reprint of my story “Sweet” from Canadian Notes and Queries summer issue.

And, um, it really was a great year–I had a good time, it’s only tonight that I feel lousy. Here’s to good times and good health in 2011–see you on the other side!!

Reverb 29 and the Freelance Lifestyle

Describe a defining moment or series of events that has affected your life this year.

(Author: Kathryn Fitzmaurice)

{Future tool: The 99%’s How to Budget for an Irregular Income. For the next 3 days as you round out your year, we’ll share one tool each day to help you plan your year ahead.}

Sigh. I really love the effort and enthusiasm behind Reverb, but I think maybe having 31 different authors contribute without knowing what others were doing was not the best way to organize–a lot of these prompts are very similar to each other. Since I’ve already shared my “alive” moment, and my “best ordinary” moment, I’m hard pressed to come up with a “defining” moment, so I think I’ll skip it. Perhaps other people’s lives are of more moment than mine (hahaha).

But I thought I’d point out the budget tool that’s included in today’s prompt is really useful (there have been other planning tools included with the Reverb package, but I haven’t been paying attention. If today’s tool is any indication, I should’ve.)

Ages ago, in the summertime when I was doing those “Jobs for Writers” posts, I believe I promised to have a guest post on freelancing. It never happened, mainly because experts I asked couldn’t spare the time–which should be a strong lesson about the freelancing lifestyle right there. I never wanted to write the whole post myself: I was only freelance for a year, and it was a slightly strange situation. I do also work with and administrate for freelancers now, but my advice on how they “should” do things may well be based on how to make things easiest for the employer, not the freelancer.

Nevertheless, I know enough about the freelance life to know that the budgeting post above is very interesting, and I think extremely useful for those who have already been at it a while and are reasonably successful, but have run into some cashflow glitches. However, if you were just getting started in the freelance world, this advice would be pretty useless to you–how would you know what your average income would be, or when things might be likely to take a dip? This 99% blog seems pretty good, so maybe there’s another post somewhere on getting started as a person with an “irregular income,” but there’s actually a few really gold bits of advice to novice freelancers hiding in this post. Allow me to pull them out for you:

The first year is difficult. You generally don’t have the ability to base your budget on averages or on the lowest income from the last twelve months. (I was able to do this because I’d been earning money before I quit to blog full-time.)

Yep, the most useful way start a freelance career is to wet your feet while you work somewhere else. Not happy news to those who hope to just dive right in, but it is extremely useful, both for being able to budget and project income/workflows, and just for building up clients. You can do this a couple ways–In Method A, you have a job you like and are good at. Once you’ve been there a while, and have proved your talents and reliability, you ask your employers if you can go freelance. This is different from “telecommuting” or “working from home,” in that it’s on an hourly basis, not salary, and not necessarily guaranteed work, but with a lot more flexibility. In Method B, you have a job you don’t much like (whether you are good at it or not), so you begin trying to find other gigs you can do on a piece basis, evenings and weekends. It takes a long time to get a client base of folks who trust and respect (and need) your work. In fact, it may take a long time to even have paying clients; many freelancers start getting their name out with volunteer projects and favours for friends. Once you’ve gotten pretty good at finding, doing, and getting paid for the work, you essentially have 2 jobs and can quit one, if you so desire.

Before I quit my “real” job to become a full-time blogger, I began to set aside a large sum of money as an emergency fund. I figured that if my income dropped below the minimum I needed to get by, I could tap the emergency fund to provide supplemental cash. With luck, I’d be able to ride out any rocky storms. (I’ve been fortunate to not have to do this.) When you have an irregular income, the bigger your emergency savings, the better.

Yep, you definitely have to do this if you don’t try one of the gradually freelance methods above, and even if you do ease into it–still recommended. Even super-crack much-beloved freelancers have dry months–that’s what’s scary /exciting about it, I guess.

—
Back to me–I think freelancing is an awesome way to balance a creative career with a more lucrative one, despite the fact it didn’t really work out for me when I tried it. Some of us really really like having conversations in the course of the day, especially if we’re going to write in the evening. Anyway, I think it’s an interesting career path, and if there’s any happy freelancers reading this who could volunteer to be interviewed or even write that guest post, I’d be very happy to hear from you!